Abstract

There is considerable interest in the application of stimulated Raman scattering to the problems of laser-beam control and atmospheric propagation. In one technique, referred to as Raman look-through, adaptive compensation is performed on the low-power Stokes seed to a Raman amplifier. If the amplifier fidelity is high, this approach allows phasefront control over the high-power output while reducing the requirements for cooled, deformable mirrors. In addition, a poor beam-quality laser may be used to pump the amplifier without incurring a penalty in beam-quality. The Raman look-through approach is shown schematically in Figure 1.

© 1988 Optical Society of America